


glimpse the walls

by červień (VioletSauce)



Series: bring down the walls [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, Freedom, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Politics, Slavery, Tatooine Culture (Star Wars), Tatooine Slave Culture (Star Wars), The Force, Worldbuilding, this story is where canon comes to die
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:28:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27425740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletSauce/pseuds/%C4%8Dervie%C5%84
Summary: “Tatooine has not always been like this. Old texts say that there used to be life, green, rivers and whole bodies of water here. If you walked far enough into the desert, you would find remains of those. But you would have to walk three days and three nights without stopping before you’d be close enough to them. Us, children of the desert, we were brought here after wars and destruction, after the previously green world was burned by ammunition and scorched by the twin suns, merciless and barren."Young Luke Skywalker learns about his planet, his people, and their usual fate, and has to reconcile with that.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Luke Skywalker, Owen Lars & Luke Skywalker & Beru Whitesun, R2-D2 & Luke Skywalker
Series: bring down the walls [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2003719
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	1. First steps

**Author's Note:**

> This is an attempt to cope with a political crisis in my not-at-all democratic country where we are fighting for democracy and an end to dictatorship, general unease about USA elections that will have a huge impact on my country's situation whether we like it or not, and an old desire to develop my own version of Tatooine and its culture and Luke's journey accounting for it. I am Eastern European and this story (and series) will be heavily inspired by some Eastern European history (if you can tell what the name of the series is inspired by, let me know!).   
> Non-movie/TCW Canon is dead, I have not read anything from Legends other than wookiepedia pages (and even then I will probably choose to disregard some points) nor the comics, so this Tatooine and this SW universe are mostly my own ruminations on the world and its history. I hope you will like it and don't mind me stepping over the Legends' toes a lot (probably).  
> 

By the time a child of the desert on Tatooine turned 5, they could tell apart 10 different types of sand and predict the weather and a coming sandstorm by them. It was necessary to tell your way in the desert, as sand in different parts of the planet and on multiple roads, invisible as they are to the untrained eye, was just different enough to be able to navigate through complete emptiness. There wasn’t an official examination or test to check this ability, but there always came a time, around age 6, that parents or caretakers would feel okay letting their children go out into the desert by themselves or take them with, to explore and look for rare plants, scavenging material, anything that could be picked up and used in the household.  
Once Luke got this unstated permission from his family, he was quick to start using it – from the time he turned 6 he would wander out almost daily, inspired by the stories the Grandmothers in the town told him and all other children his age, an effort to preserve and pass along the culture of the children of the desert that in itself became part of said culture.  
“Tatooine has not always been like this. Old texts say that there used to be life, green, rivers and whole bodies of water here. If you walked far enough into the desert, you would find remains of those. But you would have to walk three days and three nights without stopping before you’d be close enough to them. Us, children of the desert, we were brought here after wars and destruction, after the previously green world was burned by ammunition and scorched by the twin suns, merciless and barren. We had no freedom, and our masters tormented us by taking away our names. So every child of desert who resisted and got free chose a Name in Tacijan, from the earth, from the suns, from the stars, as all witnesses to their freedom,” Grandmother Lani told in one of the first unofficial classes that he had when he was 5.  
Grandmother Lani was old, and freeborn, her mother free long enough that she no longer held onto her Name as something integral. When Luke probed, she said it was Kryštal – after the sand of the canyons, jagged, sharp, and crystalline. Her mother was a freed person, while her father – a newcomer, a pilot from a different planet whose ship broke here, so he was forced to stay planetside for a while, and by the time he could repair the ship, he had met Grandmother Lani’s mother and decided to stay. “Children of the desert traditionally take desert Names, and it doesn’t matter which parent’s Name you want to take. I took my mother’s because I wanted to. Did you want to change your Name to a non-desert one?”  
Luke thought hard on that at the time, but in the end shook his head. His Name was a good one, an old one; in fact, one of the oldest of Tacijan Names. That was also something Grandmother Lian told him, “Skywalker is a Name that was taken by one of the first freed people, and one who helped the children a lot. Her other name is not known anymore, but Skywalker helped free hundreds of the children, got them out of masters’ clutches and gifted them new homes, right in this part of the town, closest to the desert. You may notice that slavers don’t live here, and that’s because this is the first district built by and for freed people. We have fought to keep it that way more than enough times, so they feel content to let us be for now. There used to be a well not too far away here, built by Skywalker. It is said she had some magical powers that helped her see the world like most of us can’t even imagine. She built a well where subsoil water could still be found, and people grew crops here – slowly, painfully, but still successfully. Slavers eventually managed to bury the well, but the children made do, as we always manage.”  
A Skywalker! Luke was immediately enraptured. A legendary freed person with his Name. He had to ask, “Grandmother, am I a Skywalker like her?”  
Grandmother Lani hummed, thinking, “It is difficult to say. Skywalker lived a long time again, and freed people would take the same Names as other freed people occasionally, so there have been many different Skywalkers since her. You are your own person, Łukaš, freeborn, and you are your own Skywalker just as well.”  
Luke pouted, but had to concede. “Grandmother, do you think I will be allowed to go into the desert soon?”  
“Oh, young Luke, Łukaš, you only need to be patient for a bit longer. Soon you’ll be able to go into the desert whenever you want,” chuckled old Grandmother, and sent him along.  
And go into the desert 6-year-old Luke did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Tatooine supposedly speaks Basic and Huttese and several other languages that are probably not as widespread, but I decided to give the people of Tatooine another language as well - Tacijan. I pronounce it /'ta-tsi-yan/ as I'd read in my native language but you can pronounce it however makes more sense to you. I'll definitely make a longer in-universe explanation of what it is and how it came to be, but I won't be specifying what language is being used when (unless thematically relevant). I might occasionally use non-English words (that exist in different languages in our real world, esp Eastern European languages) when those are proper names or cultural phenomena, all will be explained in the notes after the chapter.  
> From this chapter, Kryštal just means "crystal" and is pronounced as /crysh-'tal/.  
> Łukaš - /'lu-kash/, pretty much same as "Luke".


	2. A meeting

There were some rules to Tatooine that every child of the desert knew without having to be taught. Water is precious, don’t waste it for any reason, especially tears or alcohol. Don’t wander out into the desert if you can’t tell what sand you’re walking on. If you are lost, the priority is to find shelter, then water.

Luke was good at knowing his way in the desert. He was attentive, could read the tales of the wind and path, and could always remember the way to go after he’d walked it once. His aunt and uncle used to take him with them to the desert a lot and showed him all the paths closest to their home, explained where he could go and which he should avoid.

 _“See that mountain there, right between the suns? That’s Gora, the tallest point this side of the planet,”_ his aunt Beru would point out to him, crouching beside him, a steadying hand on his shoulder so that Luke wouldn’t run off in unwalked lanes. _“You can go up to it, but be careful; and never, ever, go through it or over it, okay, Luke? Tuskens live on the other side, they walk the mountain every day. They don’t like other people being there. And the caves have scorpions; their sting is painful and very dangerous. Promise me?”_

 _“We’re going to the Tosche Station today, Luke, dress up!”_ his uncle Owen would yell to him from where he was fiddling with another of the malfunctioning vaporators. Luke would immediately scramble for his poncho and scarf and tug them on; going to Tosche Station was exciting, and uncle Owen would show him a new path through the desert every time and tell him how to find his way back. On a lucky day, they would find some root vegetables a little ways off the path, in an area Luke was told by Grandmothers used to be a garden not even a hundred years ago before the land got drier.

By his seventh birthday Luke was familiar enough with their side of Tatooine that he could get to Mos Eisley (though he wasn’t allowed to go in), go into the desert beyond it (Grandmothers told Luke the area just behind the port had once been a scene of a grand battle and just farther into the desert was an old spot of the Clone Wars where the Republic and the Separatists fought to take control of Mos Eisley; there was always something interesting to find there), do a loop through the intercrossing of two roads four klicks Northwest, and get to Anchorhead through the hills and canyons.

But Luke was a lot more interested in the Jundland Wastes. It was the one place nearby his aunt and uncle didn’t visit too often and wouldn’t tell him much about; Luke noticed when they tried to evade conversation. And yet, something kept tugging him there, not the same desire to explore the desert as with the rest of the planet, no. This was something unique. A thrill as soft as a whisper in his ears, telling him, calling him, asking him, urging him. It’d been there for as long as Luke could remember, persistent and incomprehensible. 

So Luke prepared. The Jundland Wastes weren’t necessarily much worse than the rest of the desert, and definitely much better than the Dune Seas, endless expands of fine grain sand that not even the harshest desert plants or flowers could grow in and not even the smartest of desert-walkers could reliably cross. But the Wastes were still more hostile than the desert around towns and settlements, with more wildlife of undetermined danger factor (but, as most things in the desert, probably leaning towards “harmful at best, deadly at worst”) and more Tusken presence.

For his first foray into the Jundland Wastes, Luke decided to go all out: goggles in case the sand in the Wastes was so fine and airy his small speeder would summon a tiny sandstorm. Gloves on his hands, his usual scarf to cover his head and the lower half of his face. Clothes to cover every inch of his skin, light but protective. Luke would be very difficult to recognize in the whole get-up.

And with that, he took a small transmitter – to call his aunt and uncle if he god lost, which, to be fair, had never happened to Luke before – and set off on his speeder.

The terrain of the Wastes was difficult – uneven, with rocks mixed in with the sand that could get into your speeder and jam it, small hills that were hard to get up on, bumps along the one and only road through the Wastes that could and would throw you off your speeder if you weren’t used to it or didn’t know they were coming. The Wastes were the barrier between humans living in Anchorhead and other settlements and the Tuskens, who were more familiar with the hills and mountains of the planet. So, as the place where the two meet, the land in the Wastes was a mixture of the human-occupied planet and the Tusken. In the end, nobody really won.

Luke started his speeder slow, careful of the bumps and irregularities along the road. He was still getting used to the controls, though he was pretty sure he could do much more with any type of transport and was probably being too careful. But the speeder was new to him and he was familiarizing himself with all the controls, the size, the stirring of the machine. What good would his skill to ride or fly absolutely anything be if he crashed his transport?

As the winding desert road progressed and got thinner and thinner (and Luke started noticing a lot more parts and scrap lying around, likely from disadvantageous drivers who oversteered and crashed into the wall of the canyon; he decided he’d pick up whatever is useful on his way back), Luke had to increase the speed – it was easier to make it over bumps that way without being thrown to the side and potentially falling out of the speeder like bantha sheddings picked up by the wind and carried all over the desert. It got harder to maneuver, too, as the walls of the canyon got closer and closer together and Luke had to be very careful about how much he stirred his speeder.

Despite the difficulty, Luke was having fun! It was exhilarating, riding his speeder through the unpredictable road, relying more on feeling his way forward than seeing it, gaining more and more speed with every turn. Luke felt something in his gut, telling him when to turn, even when consciously he thought it was too soon or too late, yet it worked every time and he made every turn and wind safely, flew over every bump, made it further and further until– 

Until a tall figure of a person ran out into the road and right into Luke’s path, holding out an arm in front of themselves and obviously as stunned as Luke himself was.

“What are you--” the sound of the engine stole away the figure’s words, but Luke couldn’t focus on it anyway, he was already reacting. He took one hand off the steering controls and dropped his speed the quickest way possible – by turning off the engine. The speeder slowed and twisted, threatening to flip as it drifted along the narrow road, and Luke adjusted the stabilizers as he threw the transport sideways, using the last surge of speed to redirect the speeder and glide along the side of the road. _Please be enough, please be okay,_ Luke chanted mentally as he twisted the wheel to continue the turn of the speeder.

 _Just a bit more, just a little bit more..._ Just as the drift was slowing down, the momentum lost, Luke let go of the stabilizer to engage the left wing and even out the speeder. It turned out to be a mistake, as the second he did that, the transport bucked, tilted, and bumped into the wall of the canyon, scraping along it as Luke continued to direct the glide.

“Poodoo!” he couldn’t help but exclaim; he couldn’t see the extent of the damage, but he could immediately feel that the stirring was off. His speeder stopped completely in a few moments, and Luke hurried to unstrap himself and get out to see if he managed to avoid the person.

When Luke turned around, there wasn’t anyone there. He darted forward, scared that he really did hit whoever it was, but a voice from behind him stopped him in his tracks, “Don’t worry, young one. I got out of the way in time.”

Luke whirled around again and saw a man in brown robes. His face didn’t look very old but his bright hair, almost the color of the second sun, was greying, and the beard on his face made him look older than he probably was.

“I’m sorry I almost hit you. Do you need water? I brought some with me so I can give you a cupful,” Luke offered, as was polite to do for the inconvenience and stress that he caused.

“Oh, no, thank you. I should probably apologize to you, young one. I didn’t mean to startle you and I should not have been standing in the road. I am sorry about your speeder,” the man answered, his tone mild, and inclined his head slightly in a nod.

“I should’ve been more careful...” Luke glanced at his speeder; there was a dent in its side, but nothing too serious. “It’s not that bad. Are you sure you don’t need water?” Luke frowned. “Do you have any? You are not from here, you don’t know how hot it gets at noon. It’s going to get really bad in a few hours, you should get water and find shelter. Actually, who are you?”

“Well, young one,” the man looked somewhat overwhelmed at the questions, “my name is Ben. I have water with me, you have no reason to be concerned. Why do you think I am a foreigner?”

Luke’s expression was deadpan, “You talk differently. Nobody here speaks like that! And nobody says “young one” here. Why are you here? Also my name is Luke!”

“Well met, young Luke.” Ben crouched in front of him; Luke was thankful not to have to look up anymore, the suns were glaring into his eyes. “Here as in Tatooine? Or this canyon?”

“On Tatooine! But... second one too. Why are you in Jundland Wastes?”

“I came to Tatooine to do an important task that I promised a dear friend I would do,” Luke opened his mouth to cut in with more questions but Ben held up a hand. “Let me finish first, young one. I am in the Wastes because my home is here.”

“In the Wastes?” Luke’s face and tone took on an incredulous expression. “But– but it’s so close to Tuskens!”

“The Tuskens do not bother me, Luke, and I am not afraid of them. But what are you doing here, so close to them?”

Luke opened his mouth to give his answer but found that he didn’t have one. Frowning, he said, “I dunno, just had a feeling I needed to come here. And I’ve never been here so I wanted to see! Oh, and Grandmother Sana told me there were charo berry plants growing here, I wanted to find some.”

Grandmother Sana had, indeed, told Luke that before, though this wasn’t on his mind when he geared up to come to the Wastes. He was glad to have remembered, though. Maybe if he brought some charo berries, aunt Beru and uncle Owen wouldn’t be as mad that he damaged his speeder.

“Berry? I wouldn’t have imagined there could be plant life growing here...” Ben stood up with a thoughtful look on his face, his right hand tugging on his beard.

“Well, you’re not local,” Luke shrugged. “Grandmother Sana says the Wastes have just enough water and shade that charo berry grows here. It’s very dry but we make flour out of it. You should try it sometime! I’ll ask Aunt Beru if you could come to dinner when we have bliny.”

“Thank you, Luke, but it won’t be necessary,” Ben said. Luke thought there was a note of sorrow in his voice, but also resignation. “I am doing just fine here.”

Luke frowned again; he was doing it a lot around Ben, but he guessed Ben was just that sort of person, capable of making people frown all the time. He looked up at the man and asked, “You are alone here, right? Tatooine is a bad planet to be alone on. You shouldn’t be.”

Ben looked down on Luke with a sort of frozen wonder, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was looking at. It reminded him of aunt Beru that time he brought home a small frightened animal (squirrel, as he was later told) that stowed away on a ship that docked in Mos Eisley and that Luke just barely managed to calm down. Luke didn’t know what to think of that look directed at himself.

In time, the look changed to something less incredulous, something warmer, gentler.

“Well,” said Ben, “then we should look for those berries, shouldn’t we?” And extended his hand to Luke.

Luke took Ben’s hand and felt like something shifted. Something changed and things would not be the same anymore, not like they were going to happen before.

Luke took a step forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! this chapter was supposed to be completely different but things kind of got out of my control as I was writing it... I'm not good at dialogue today but I think I'm still better than George. hopefully.  
> also, the bit about making flour out of berries is legit, they do that in Siberia with hagberry. that tree can be found all across Eurasia but e.g. in my country we don't really do anything with it, meanwhile there it's eaten and they make flour with it (and probably more that I don't know about). "charo" is also inspired by that berry, bc in my native language we call it "čaromcha" (cha-'rom-ha), so, "charo"  
> and yes, my take is that people on tatooine would definitely make bliny and you can pry it out of my cold dead hands. it's one of the easiest foods to make (flour + milk/water + salt&sugar is pretty much enough for the most basic version) and it could be used in many ways, from being eaten as it is to wrapping other food in it. and, well, i am writing "tatooine but give it eastern european characteristics" so of course they make bliny.  
> anyway, tell me what you think :) see you next time!


End file.
